Best of 2019 Interviews in World Events and People Making a Difference

Inside the Life and Power of Kim Jong Un (0:32) Guest: Anna Fifield, Beijing Bureau Chief, Washington Post, Author of “The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ended 2019 with a threat to resume nuclear weapons and long-range missile testing. That’s bad news for negotiations to end North Korea’s nuclear program entirely. But President Trump says he’s optimistic a deal could still happen. Two unprecedented summits between President Trump and Chairman Kim in 2019, heightened interest in just who the secretive leader of North Korea is and how he came to power at such a young age. Washington Post Beijing bureau chief Anna Fifield spent a decade tracking down the answers for her book, “The Great Successor.” It came out last year and led to one of our favorite interviews of 2019. The day I spoke with Fifield, news had broken that Kim Jong Un’s older half-brother was a CIA informant before his assassination. (Originally aired June 14, 2019).  Pro-Democracy Protests Rock Moscow, but Putin Remains Unshaken (24:04) Guest: Angela Stent, Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Author “Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest” While America obsessed over the threat Russia poses to our politics and democracy, Russian President Vladimir Putin faced threats to his own power in 2019. Over the summer, there were large scale protests in Russia, particularly over the decision of Putin’s political party to disqualify some opposition candidates from city council elections in Moscow. Even with that suppression, Putin’s political allies went on to suffer embarrassing defeat in the Moscow elections. (Originally aired August 28, 2019).  China’s Mass Incarceration of Muslim Uyghurs May Be a New Form of Ethnic Cleansing (37:27) Guest: Sean R. Roberts, Ph.D., Director and Associate Professor, International Development Studies Program, Elliott